1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image recording apparatus and, in particularly, to a double-sided printable image recording apparatus, which is a two-liquid printing method and has a fixed recording head having a printing region of a recording medium width.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printing method using an ink jet method is advantageous in that an apparatus can be made smaller, noise is low, and running costs are low. However, in an aqueous ink jet printer, the solvent for an ink used is water, and simultaneously achieving both improved drying property of ink and improved image quality has hitherto been an extremely pressing challenge.
In order to solve this problem, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No 64-63185 discloses a two-liquid printing method using a treating liquid together with an ink, which increases the viscosity or aggregation of the ink, and Japanese Patent No. 3158004 describes a method of adjusting ejection of the treating liquid in accordance with the surrounding environment. Or, as described in JP-A No. 2002-210947, a method of changing the dot diameter of ink and the amount of a treating liquid to be imparted during high speed printing and low speed printing, has been proposed.
In addition, in recent years, in order to enable high speed printing of ink jet printer, an aqueous ink jet printer fitted with a fixed recording head having a printing region corresponding to the width of a recording medium (hereinafter, referred to as “FWA (Full Width Array)”) has been developed.
In an ink jet printer fitted with FWA, since there is no movement in a main scanning direction, printing speed is dramatically increased. On the other hand, curl and cockle of paper is generated due to the high speed of the printing, and conveyance becomes problematic. In addition, it becomes necessary to improve image quality in terms of bleeding, offset of ink, and the like.
In particular, in order to perform double-sided printing, these points requiring improvement are all the more prominent, and methods of solving them have been urgently demanded. That is, in a double-sided printable image recording apparatus in which a two-liquid printing system is applied, and which has a fixed recording head having a printing region of a recording medium width, development of an image recording apparatus which can provide better printing image quality on both the front surface and the back surface of a recording medium has been urgently demanded.